274: “Las Vegas Tango” by Gil Evans
April 3, 2012 Leave a comment
Some hypotheticals:
SOMETIMES you might feel both sophisticated and funky. Like maybe you wanna take a tomato juice bath while you’re wearing a tuxedo even though you haven’t been sprayed by a skunk.
And/or SOMETIMES you might feel like flying to Vegas and doing things that would make your loved ones vomit in their fedoras.
This song is a pleasant alternative for those times.
“Las Vegas Tango” takes you to a Vegas that exists only in the minds of its listeners. This Vegas is sophisticated and funky, and when it wears a fedora, it wears a fedora… without tightrolling its pants and without ever ordering anything resembling a “half-caff soy frap.”
This Vegas is rocking punctual brass. Things are on time, and on the house. It’s got classy broads with nice lines. Diplomatic immunity is in the air. People are smoking on the plane like they’re trying to cover the smell. And in this Vegas, fate still has six sides and twelve faces. Drink it in, listener. What goes in your earholes stays in your earholes.
Gil Evans is responsible for this vision, originally from Individualism of Gil Evans (1964). Evans was a jazz composer/pianist/Dudicus Maximus whose name is normally mentioned alongside that of Miles Davis for his role in helping birth the cool. Emphasis, mine.
Stay seated with your seatbelt fastened (if you’re not making out with the stewardess). And enjoy your trip.
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